photo auction famous photographers

Some 80 photographers have given a picture from their own collections away to help orphans in Rwanda go to school. The photographers participating include Diana Blok, Vincent Mentzel, Eddy Posthuma de Boer, Laura Samson, Marieke van der Velden, Rob Hornstra, Ilvy Njiokiktjien, Geert van Kesteren, Carel van Hees and Carla Kogelman (who won first prize at the World Press Photo exhibition last year). Among the selection are beautiful, poignant, historical, current, and award-winning photographs. The minimum prize is € 100,-.

Rwanda is closing all its orphanages. The children have had to return to families. But a pilot study by Tulane University revealed that half of the children who had returned to homes, regularly went to bed hungry. To make sure the children can still go to school and have a chance to escape poverty, photographers Anaïs López and Bert Verhoeff started an online photo auction. The online bidding on the photos can take place from November 23 thru the 29th. All proceeds will go to the project Country without Orphans.

Initiator of the photo auction are the wellknown documentary photographer Bert Verhoeff and Anaïs López. Together with journalist Paulien Bakker and filmmaker Anisleidy Martinez, Anaïs follows five children from orphanage L’Esperance, which was closed in January of this year, as part of Rwanda’s policy to close all orphanages. They revisited the children last June. They noticed the sheer poverty many children had fallen back to. In addition to their journalistic work, they decided to also set up funds to send the kids to school. A year primary school in Rwanda costs (including books and school uniform) 60 euros. A year high school (that’s boarding school in Africa) is 500 euros. Did you get your Christmas presents yet? Have a look now: photo auction.